1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a server, and more particularly, to a rackmount server.
2. Description of Related Art
A server is a computer that serves other computers in a network system, and which often provides essential services (for example, hard disk and printing service) to users across the network system and allows the users to share various network resources. The infrastructure of a server is similar to that of a typical personal computer (PC) and is usually composed of a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, and input/output (I/O) devices, etc. Foregoing components in a server are connected by buses, the CPU and the memory are connected through north bridge chips, and the I/O devices are connected through south bridge chips. Servers have gone through three development stages based on their packaging as tower servers, rackmount servers focused on centralized performance, and blade servers focused on high-density computing.
Taking rackmount server as an example, a rackmount server is a server with standardized appearance, and which is used along with a case. A rackmount server can be considered as a tower server with optimized structure, and which is designed to save server space. Many specialized network equipments (for example, switches, routers, and hardware firewalls) adopt such a rackmount structure and are designed to have a flat, drawer-like structure. The width of a rackmount server is 19 inches, and the height thereof is in units of U (1 U=1.75 inches=44.45 mm). For example, 1 U, 2 U, 3 U, 4 U, 5 U, and 7 U servers are the most commonly used servers.
The size of a server case usually conforms to an industry standard to be from 22 U to 42 U. Demountable sliding brackets are disposed in the server case at height intervals of U such that a user can place a server, a hub, a storage cabinet, and other network equipments and adjust their heights flexibly according to the actual requirement. After the server is placed, all the I/O cables thereof are ran out from the back of the server case (all the interfaces of the rackmount server are also at the back) and arranged in a cable tray of the server case and labeled for the convenience of management.
Along with the increase in the density of computing and storage devices in a server case, the large amount of cables and power lines makes it very untidy, and the accumulation of these cables and power lines at the back of the server case blocks air circulation and makes heat radiation very difficult.